“I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas. (Chorus)I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas. I like to ate, ate, ate Ape-ples and Banay-nays. (Chorus)I like to ate, ate, ate Ape-ples and Banay-nays. ..” (Barney‘s Favorites, 1993.)
What does this have to do with anything? Well, the reason we eat apples and bananas is the color appeal. Color in itself is a primary indicator of whether a food item is appetizing. You would not eat anything that was brown, gray, black and green all blended together would you?
Colors such as reds, yellows, vibrant greens, and other elaborate mixes of colors are what attract the mouth to trigger the desire receptors for food consumption in the brain. Well these color cues are more of a double-edged sword. Meaning just because something looks good does not mean that it is good for you.
Eating food that is not part of your normal balanced diet will most defiantly expand those waistlines. Have you ever wondered why college freshmen by the end of their first year seem to depend on those “o’ so comfy, sweats”?
Why are the college years so deconstructive to an otherwise balanced diet?
To simple state an answer, it is because everything is new and different to you. The foods offered are not typically available in a “public school” (K-12) setting. This is especially true if the student is fresh out of high school.
Mommy and Daddy are not there to say, “Eat all your veggies snuckums, so you can be big and strong like us!”
Well if you are a member of the freshman weight challenge of “who wants to avoid those unsightly pounds,” here are a few suggestions from the website color matters:
1. Be a pro-blue consumer. Considered the color blue, which is an appetite suppressant; it is one of those colors that after a while your brain loses the interest to desire foods of that hue.
2. Place a blue light bulb in your dorm room refrigerator.
3. Try using edible food coloring to make your food less appealing. Use colors of pure disgust, like black or moldy green (yellow, green, and a drop of black blended together).
If all else fails, put on a well fitting M&M shade of “BLUE”, shirt and white washed blue jeans and check out your “heaviness” in a full length mirror. Seeing yourself stuffed, in what use to fit that no longer does will usually do the trick.
So go ahead, enjoy those sushi rolls with blue rice and blue hotdogs with purple or green ketchup (courtesy of Heinz, 2001), and watch those college pounds bypass you. On the other hand, you could always be the next spokes-person for JENNYCRAIG, look out Valerie Bertinelli.
